Go Healthy For Good: April 2016

Unsweetened baked beans on toast are a great breakfast choice for diabetics and pre-diabetics. A group of diabetic patients was randomly assigned to eat either no legumes or replace two servings of red meat with legumes on three days of each week. At the end of the study, the bean-eaters had lower glucose, insulin, cholesterol and blood fats than those who didn’t eat the legumes. And since beans are cheaper than meat, they weren’t just healthier, they were wealthier too.

Diet, exercise, cognitive training and sleep may help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers found that at-risk elderly people who were asked two years earlier to engage in cognitive training and physical activity, eat more fruit, veggies and wholegrains, and get sufficient sleep scored 25 per cent higher on cognitive testing and were 50 per cent faster on cognitive processing than those who were not asked to make any lifestyle changes.

Kids exposed to household pesticides have higher rates of cancer. Harvard researchers have found that household insecticides carry a 45 per cent higher risk and professional home pest control doubles the risk of leukaemia and lymphoma. There also appears to be a small increase in brain tumours and childhood cancers in general.

Teenagers who stress easily are more likely to become middle-aged diabetics, according to a study in Sweden. On entry into the military, 1.5 million 18-year-olds underwent psychological assessment. When they were in their 40s, medical records showed that those less able to handle stress at the time of conscription were 50 per cent more likely to have diabetes 25 years later, when compared to those who managed stress well.

Half-a-dozen herbal remedies have been found to be better than placebo at treating lower back pain. Applying devil’s claw, white willow bark, comfrey ointment, Brazilian arnica gel, lavender essential oil or, most effectively, cayenne cream, with acupressure enabled users to either reduce or replace their drug medications.